What's So Funny About Making Monetary Policy?

During their meetings, the members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) make monetary policy, but they also make each other laugh. This article studies the amount of laughter elicited by members of the FOMC during their meetings. The study finds that a member elicits more laughter if he or she expects higher inflation, other things being equal. This finding suggests that members may use humor to cope with the threat of inflation. 

That is form a paper by Kevin W. Capehart. I did not find a full paper, but a video is here. 

Analyzing the effects of US monetary policy shocks in dollarized countries

Identifying monetary policy shocks is difficult. Therefore, instead of trying to do this perfectly, this paper exploits a natural setting that reduces the consequences of shock misidentification. It does so by basing conclusions upon the responses of variables in three dollarized countries (Ecuador, El Salvador, and Panama). They import US monetary policy just as genuine US states do, but have the advantage that non-monetary US shocks are not imported perfectly. Consequently, this setting reduces the effects of any mistakenly included non-monetary US shocks, while leaving the effects of true monetary shocks unaffected. Results suggest that prices fall after monetary contractions; output does not show a clear response.

Source.  

What is especial about Friedman and Schwartz's "A Monetary History of the United States 1867 to 1960"?

A Monetary History of the United States 1867 to 1960 published in 1963 was written as part of an extensive NBER research project on Money and Business Cycles started in the 1950s. The project resulted in three more books and many important articles. A Monetary History was designed to provide historical evidence for the modern quantity theory of money. The principal lessons of the modern quantity theory of the long-run neutrality of money, the transitory effects of monetary policy on real economic activity, and the importance of stable money and of monetary rules have all been absorbed in modern macro models. A Monetary History, unlike the other books, has endured the test of time and has become a classic whose reputation has grown with age. It succeeded because it was based on narrative and not an explicit model. The narrative methodology pioneered by Friedman and Schwartz and the beautifully written story still captures the imaginations of new generations of economists.

That is from a new paper by Bordo & Rockoff (February 2013). 

Does the Fed Control Interest Rates?

Strong statements about the effects of Federal Reserve actions on interest rates are common in the media and among academics. I’ve long been puzzled by such claims since the Fed seems to be a minor player in financial markets. In recent years total U.S. credit market debt, as reported in Federal Reserve Flow of funds tables, is in excess of $50 trillion. Prior to the financial crisis of 2008, total financial assets held by the Fed are less than $1 trillion, or less than two percent of the U.S. market. In response to the financial crisis of 2008, total financial assets held by the Fed jump to over $2 trillion and are almost $2.5 trillion at the end of 2010. This is huge by historical standards, but still less than five percent of the U.S. market. Many large banks (e.g., J.P., Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, etc.) have balance sheets comparable in size to the Fed’s. Moreover, the U.S. credit market sits in a large international market that is open to major market participants (governments and large private firms, financial and nonfinancial) around the world, and the big players can and do operate across markets. In this context, it may seem implausible that the Fed has more than a minor role in determining interest rates, except to the extent that it can affect inflation expectations. It seems even more implausible that in an open international bond market, multiple central banks can separately control interest rates in their local markets.

That is from a new paper by Eugene Fama.